1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to network communication protocols, and in particular to a point-to-point protocol for use with the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
The increased popularity of on-line services such as AMERICA ONLINE(trademark), COMPUSERVE(copyright), and other services such as Internet gateways have spurred applications to provide multimedia, including video and voice clips, to online users. An example of an online voice clip application is VOICE E-MAIL FOR WINCIM and VOICE E-MAIL FOR AMERICA ONLINE(trademark), available from Bonzi Software, as described in xe2x80x9cSimple Utilities Send Voice E-Mail Onlinexe2x80x9d, MULTIMEDIA WORLD, VOL. 2, NO. 9, August 1995, p. 52. Using such Voice E-Mail software, a user may create an audio message to be sent to a predetermined E-mail address specified by the user.
Generally, devices interfacing to the Internet and other online services may communicate with each other upon establishing respective device addresses. One type of device address is the Internet Protocol (IP) address, which acts as a pointer to the device associated with the IP address. A typical device may have a Serial Line Internet Protocol or Point-to-Point Protocol (SLIP/PPP) account with a permanent IP address for receiving e-mail, voicemail, and the like over the Internet. E-mail and voicemail is generally intended to convey text, audio, etc., with any routing information such as an IP address and routing headers generally being considered an artifact of the communication, or even gibberish to the recipient.
Devices such as a host computer or server of a company may include multiple modems for connection of users to the Internet, with a temporary IP address allocated to each user. For example, the host computer may have a general IP address XXX.XXX.XXX, and each user may be allocated a successive IP address of XXX.XXX.XXX.10, XXX.XXX.XXX.11, XXX.XXX XXX.12, etc. Such temporary IP addresses may be reassigned or recycled to the users, for example, as each user is successively connected to an outside party. For example, a host computer of a company may support a maximum of 254 IP addresses which are pooled and shared between devices connected to the host computer.
Permanent IP addresses of users and devices accessing the Internet readily support point-to-point communications of voice and video signals over the Internet. For example, realtime video teleconferencing has been implemented using dedicated IP addresses and mechanisms known as reflectors. Due to the dynamic nature of temporary IP addresses of some devices accessing the Internet, point-to-point communications in realtime of voice and video have been generally difficult to attain.
A point-to-point Internet protocol is disclosed which exchanges Internet Protocol (IP) addresses between processing units to establish a point-to-point communication link between the processing units through the Internet.
A first point-to-point Internet protocol is disclosed which includes the steps of:
(a) storing in a database a respective IP address of a set of processing units that have an on-line status with respect to the Internet;
(b) transmitting a query from a first processing unit to a connection server to determine the on-line status of a second processing unit; and
(c) retrieving the IP address of the second unit from the database using the connection server, in response to the determination of a positive on-line status of the second processing unit, for establishing a point-to-point communication link between the first and second processing units through the Internet.
A second point-to-point Internet protocol is disclosed, which includes the steps of:
(a) transmitting an E-mail signal, including a first IP address, from a first processing unit;
(b) processing the E-mail signal through the Internet to deliver the E-mail signal to a second processing unit; and
(c) transmitting a second IP address to the first processing unit for establishing a point-to-point communication link between the first and second processing units through the Internet.